Enlarge (credit: Valve)
PC gaming is often regarded as a solitary pursuit, but the advent of PC gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck has made sharing favorite titles far easier—at least unofficially. Valve’s Steam platform, which previously didn’t have too much in the way of sharing, has embraced this hand-off reality with Steam Families.
Steam Families, now in beta, replaces both the more limited Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View. You invite up to five family members (for a six-person total family), share games with them (if developers allow it), and then family members can see their family library games in a subsection of their list. Anyone can play a shared game and keep their own save files and achievements.
Steam Families is, on the surface, more permissive than Family Sharing. You can play a game from a family member’s library even if they’re already online and playing something